It has been known in the art for a long time to use industrial and agricultural solid organic by-products, such as forestry an agricultural residue and the like, as potential sources of large amount of chemical energy. Such organic materials are frequently referred to as “biomass” materials. There is a large library of patents and other publications dealing with gasifiers (retorts) and associated systems for creating energy from biomass materials.
Patents dealing with such systems are for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,971,599 that issued to Cordell on Nov. 20, 1990; U.S. Pat. No. 4,691,846 that issued to Cordell, et al. on Sep. 8, 1987; U.S. Pat. No. 4,593,629 that issued to Pedersen, et al. on Jun. 10, 1986; U.S. Pat. No. 4,430,948 that issued to Schafer, et al. on Feb. 14, 1984; U.S. Pat. No. 4,321,877 that issued to Schmidt, et al. on Mar. 30, 1982; U.S. Pat. No. 4,312,278 that issued to Smith, et al. on Jan. 26, 1982; U.S. Pat. No. 4,184,436 that issued to Palm, et al. on Jan. 22, 1980, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,138,957 that issued to Morey, et al. on Aug. 18, 1992.
However, none of these patents deal with a horizontal auger system to deliver feed material to a discharge elbow that discharges directly to a burn pile in the gasifier. The prior art deals with vertical auger units and most of them deal with a double vertical auger system. The disadvantage to the use of vertical augers is that the inside vertical auger cannot be repaired while the system is on-line, and they have a tendency to burn up at the tip when dry fuels are fired, or when there is an upset in the system. This problem has been completely eliminated by the use of a single, horizontal auger firing into a ceramic discharge elbow for discharging directly into the burn pile.
The gasifier of the instant invention is less costly to build and operate, easier to maintain, has fewer moving parts and contains nearly 100% ceramic internals to prevent warping and contortion of metal parts that are used in the prior art devices.